Pineapple Chili Upside-Down Cupcakes with Lemon Creme
May 9th, 2009 by prissycook
Sprouts is a regional farmer’s market style grocery store and I do a majority of my grocery shopping between Arizona home based grocery chain Basha’s and Sprouts. Sprouts stores have these candy displays where gummy worms, sugared candies, Boston Baked beans are all in bulk tubs next to organic wheat flower and pumpkin granola.
You can’t help but wonder by the candy when you’re getting anything in the store. It’s amazing! The other day they had candied pineapples with lemon and chili. The flavor profile looked interesting and I tried one.
Yuck! Seriously, the candy was bad all the way around, weird chewy, gritty from the massive amounts of chili powder and not a hit of lemon flavor. But I thought there was some reason they put those particular flavors together, so undetured, I started planning how I could that profile into a cupcake.
What I ended up with was the idea to make a Pineapple Chili Upside-Down Cupcake with Lemon Creme.
If you get really close to the monitor you can see the little chili flakes on the pineapple. These were some of my favorite cupcakes to date. I was able to bypass the whole “frosting” bit by adding whipping cream to the top.
I may make a batch of these again this weekend, especially since I know that my friend Wendy and her cupcake loving husband Jonathan are out of town this weekend!
Lemon Curd
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons finely grated fresh lemon zest
1/2 cup sugar
3 large eggs
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into bits
Whisk together juice, zest, sugar, and eggs in a 2-quart heavy saucepan. Stir in butter and cook over moderately low heat, whisking frequently, until curd is thick enough to hold marks of whisk and first bubble appears on surface, about 6 minutes.
Transfer lemon curd to a bowl and chill, its surface covered with plastic wrap, until cold, at least 1 hour.
Lemon Curd Creme
1 recipe lemon curd
1 cup heavy cream
Whip cream until it has firm peaks and fold in lemon curd. Chill for 15 minutes before serving.
Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes
1 batch of your favorite yellow cake recipe
Fresh Pineapplie Chunks (about 1 1/2 cups)
6 T Brown Sugar
6 T Melted Butter
Chili Powder
Non-stick Cooking Spray
Prepare cupcake tins by spraying with cooking spray. Pour melted butter into bottom of cupcake tins, enough to cover the bottom with 1/8 inch of butter. Add brown sugar, about 3/4 T. Arrange pineapple chunks into a fan pattern on top of the brown sugar and sprinkle with Chili Powder. Give it a good sprinkle. If you don’t the taste will get lost in the other flavors.
Picture of prepared tins:
Keesha oversees recruiting and training programs for GoDaddy.com. She is responsible for building programs that attract and retain amazing employees.
Keesha loves food and photography and is passionate about community volunteering. She sat on the board of directors for the Junior League of Phoenix and is on the Children's Museum of Phoenix committee. She attended Blinn College and Texas A&M University. Her most private cupcake confession? She doesn't like frosting!